I want to become a better teacher

Jaime Escalante. Rafe Esquith. That woman who divorced Patrick Duffy. Those are great teachers. Why can't I be one?

Maybe it's because I can't follow through with promises to myself. In my first post I called myself out on using rhetorical questions and I obviously couldn't keep that down for even one post. It's not that I don't have some good ideas, buy my follow-through, my persistence, my sticktoitiveness (a word I encountered during an institute day presentation) looks more like Goofus than Gallant.

There are issues with the teachers I mentioned about their commitment and possible lack of home/family life, but that's a topic for another day. Time is certainly in short supply for me, being a parent to three children, two of whom just had to be born at the same time. There is time enough, though, but the energy is in short supply. I feel like an old lithium battery that just can't hold a charge anymore.

Does anyone else feel that whoosh of lost energy at about 4 p.m. every day? Last night, I sat in the recliner as my lovely wife got dinner together for the doodle duo (and they played in big cardboard boxes that brought their cute pink chairs). I closed my eyes, and . . . well, y'know, there were 10 minutes gone.

Of course I know that my job is not special in terms of causing exhaustion. I'm not complaining about my lot in life and I do understand that most occupations have their own private hells. The grass does look greener sometimes, even when I look at what my lovely wife does -- special education -- and how few students are under her care (about 40 to my 140). I see her come home exhausted, I listen to her stories about trifling colleagues, I've even visited classrooms with her and met some severely affected kids; and, yet, I drool over that lopsided ratio as if the fix is all in the numbers. But I know it is not.

The key is science. Or at least the scientific method, since science is, of course, banned now in U.S. public schools. Observation and notes, the hallmarks of good scienticians, are the keys in my pursuit of a Golden Apple (I don't care about awards, but of course I do). As I mentioned, I have good ideas. I need to try them, reflect on the outcomes, and then keep what works and ditch the rest.

I guess, to follow the method, I need to get some kind of picture at what kind of condition I'm in now as a teacher -- student grades being the most concrete makers. So, next post: The Data!